It took three days of hiking to get to my first target creek, one day on the road thanks to a ride with a passing nosy local and two trekking through the forest and bush. The night that I arrived beside the creek, I quickly set up the green tarp and threw my body into the bed, I was completely exhausted from the hiking and Aura training I did on the way.
For now, the Aura my training was just the very basics, keeping a small flow of mana circulating throughout the body without focusing on any physiological structures. I still planned on using Bio Magic on myself at a later date, so I couldn’t go too far in my training only to have to do it over again later.
That morning I woke up late, to the sound of rain pattering over the tarp. Grumbling, I got up and went about making breakfast on my magic camp stove. I soon finished the quick soup from dry stock, jerky and some wild onions I had found on the way. I walked down to the creek in the slight rain, carrying the dishes, using the clear water to rinse the small camp pot clean.
Putting everything down I put my fingers into the gravel creek bed and drew a very basic Detection magic circle, Detect Metal. Unfortunately, I had to soon give up, the loose gravel forced me to make the circle too big for the small space beside the creek.
Shaking my head, I grabbed the pot and spoon, walking back up to my tarp. I spent the next hour or so resetting the camp, the hasty setup the night before being less than ideal.
By the creek, a little trickle of magic unfolded the memory plastic table, on which I laid a letter sized piece of paper beside my notebook. With a crayon that I had mixed with powdered aluminum, I quickly traced out the simplified Detect Metal circle. Grabbing a handful of gravel from the creek, I placed it in the center of the simple circle. I closed my eyes and channelled a trickle of mana into the circle carefully, to make sure my metal crayon circle didn’t have any hidden flaws. With no errors showing, I channeled more mana into the circle. The circle glowed a bright red, indicating that there was metal in range. In this case the range was the small area in the center of the circle where I had placed the gravel.
When the glow faded, I tried to gauge how much more I could do. This circle had been only the bare bones. With an extremely limited detection range, and only a single output of a red glow to indicate a significant presence of metal, it was the cheapest mana cost circle I could create. I also had to consider if this would be more efficient using Detection magic vs Elemental magic.
Using Elemental magic would be mana cheaper, but could only be used like a metal detector, gravity sensor, or ground sonar. All could be used to find the presence of metals in the ground but were not very detailed.
I lifted the paper and looked at the charred circle it left behind on the table.
“Damn, the resistance in the metal crayon must be pretty high.”-Me
The crayon wasn’t as good as I hoped, but it would have to do for now. Brushing the charred paper off the table, I placed a larger sheet of paper down and opened my notebook. An hour later I had a new three-layer circle traced out. Much more complex than the first, this was a full Detect Metal circle, the range set for 10-meter half sphere down into the ground. I checked it over several times, then trickled mana into it to test for flaws. After fixing a few lines that were too thin, I stood up straight and stretched out my back.
“Next time we grab the chair and sit down.”-Me
I closed the notebook, placing it in my inner jacket pocket, and pulled off my shoes and socks. After rolling up my pant legs I picked up the table with the paper on it and walked it out to the middle of the creek.
“Fuck that’s cold!”-Me
The water level was soon up to my knees when I plunked the plastic table legs down into the gravel bed. I grabbed a few of the charged, glass coated metal beads I had in my pocket, placing them so the metal would touch the crayon.
-I have got to find a better mana battery for this, these beads are too small and awkward.
I slowly started to feed the outer circle mana, making sure the beads were hooked in. The circle glowed a low red, indicating that it was functioning, as I pushed mana at what felt was close to my maximum. My feet were starting to ache when the circle flashed bright read and a list appeared on far-right side of the paper.
Stumbling, I hauled the table back to the shore, and sat down to rub feeling back into my toes.
“Let's go wading in the winter cold creek with our bare feet. Dumb idea!”-Me
When the tingling in my toes went from painful to just distracting, I put the socks and boots back on. Grabbing the table with the burnt paper, I walked back to the camp to sit and dry my feet and now damp socks in front of the magic stove.
As my toes steamed, I held up the paper to read what had been printed on the right-hand side.
VOL 2089
Al 146
Fe 167
Cu .209
Zn .188
Ni .293
Au .000
Ag .001
These numbers were the amount of the respective element in cubic meters of the roughly 2100 cubic meters that Detect metal spell covered. The 10-meter radius wasn’t great, but it would cover the riverbed.
-This looks pretty typical for the area. Maybe I should have made it to five decimal places?
“No. Would have cost too much mana and I probably couldn’t extract anything at those low amounts.”-Me
There was gold there, but it was in such low quantities and locked in with other elements. The cost in mana to extract it with Elemental magic would be high, so I would have to limit the volume to bring the cost down. The smaller volume would mean I would have to repeat the spell many more times. I wanted more bang for my mana I would have to find a higher gold concentration. I had previously figured my minimum target to be around 1 ppm. Typically, a gold mine was economically viable around 6 ppm.
The test was a success even if this particular creek was a bust. I opened up my notebook and wrote down the location, the volume, and the amounts of each element. As my socked feet dried, I reconsidered my approach.
-Using a half sphere is kind of a waste since I’m going to be standing on the side of the creeks. Spring runoff is going to raise the water level and I don’t think I’ll be able to set the circle off in the middle anymore.
I wiggled my toes and rotated the socks to get the other side.
-A cone would probably be a better idea. Figure that out today, sleep here tonight, then pack up and move up the creek tomorrow.
I pulled the note nook back over and started to make notes on modifying the Detect Metal circle.
…..
Several days later I stood on the edge of a rushing creek looking at the cliff face that rose from the frothing water. The cliff face had large deep green and gold veins running in bands through a light grey stone. The whole face of rock appeared to have been recently exposed, a significant portion having sheared off into the raging creek below. I had stopped because the green band had been reflecting the light like a sheet of glass.
-I wonder if that’s quartz? Maybe Jade. It kind of looks like Amunalite, which shouldn’t be here.
Amunalite was a gemstone that was only produced under high mana conditions. A deep green glassy colour Amunalite was a one of the better materials to create small scale mana storage items.
-That would be an absolutely huge deposit if it was.
I looked around and up at the sky.
-This is a good enough spot to stop. Ill setup camp and see if I can fish a piece out of the creek.
I dropped my pack against a tree, estimated the 10-meter distance from the creek that environmental laws required. I set up the green trap, the memory plastic furniture, and the solar panel I had been slowly building up.
-Now to get some rocks for a fire, and hopefully a chunk of the green stone.
Walking down the creek a bit, the ground flattened out allowing the creek to spread out. With the extra width, the water slowing down as well. From here I made several trips with large rocks to ring a fire pit that I had dug into the ground. I didn’t find any of the green stone in arms reach from the creek edge.
After starting a fire using dead wood and a bit of Elemental magic, I walked back down to the creek with a roll of nylon cord. I little further up the creek I fed the cord into the water. Using the water with Elemental magic I guided the cord to the cliff side. A bit more Water Shaping guided the cord down and around a chunk of stone under the water at the cliffs base.
Water Shaping was part of Elemental magic that played with viscosity, pressure, and surface tension to allow the caster to move water around. High pressure water jets, kinetic sculptures, water walking, tidal waves, etc were all possible with Water Shaping. In this case I used it to nudge the current around, dragging the cord down and swirling it around a chunk of stone at the base of the cliff.
Because I couldn’t see what I was doing, I had to guess using the feedback from the Water Shaping. It took several hours of fumbling with the cord, pulling out random rocks to finally grab one from the green stone seem.
It was a translucent green, dark at the edges running to a lighter colour towards the center with an almost gold/yellow translucent lines running through it. With Stone Shaping, I sheared off the rough sides to form cube about 8cm on a side. Picking up one of the small off cuts, I started running mana into them, testing their resistance and permeability.
-It’s not Amunalite. Fairly good permeability, probably about 4 times what my glass coated beads can hold. The resistance is higher, but I really only need a slow, steady output for Embroidery magic.
For mana storage you had to consider a few factors.
1 Permeability. Just how much mana the material could hold. Usually this was a weight of material verse density of power consideration.
2 Resistance. How hard was it to transfer mana in or out. This also how even the flow transferred. A material that released power in random spurts wasn’t that useful.
3 Isolation. How well the material held the mana. This could be augmented by encasing the material in a high resistant material similar to the glass that coated the aluminum beads I was currently using.
4 Durability. How well the material held up holding mana for long periods, as well as how it handled being charged and emptied regularly.
I cut several shapes out of the off cuts, charged them to full, and left them sitting. I would check on them over the day to get a feel on how the stone reacted.
I walked back down to the creek edge and opened my notebook, checking on the adjusted Detect Metal spell. Once I was sure of the details, I turned to a new page, visualized the magic circle, and cast. A translucent image of the circle appeared above the notebook. It slowly rotated as I kept the image in my mind, till a list appeared on the open page.
When the image faded, I rubbed the bridge of my nose.
“Damn that hurts. This body sucks for casting.”-Me
Casting the spell had pushed me over my safe channelling limit. I walked back to the camp to sit for a few minutes as the headache and the pins stabbing through my joints faded.
-That really isn’t that complex of a spell and it's overheating my brain all ready. I really need to find enough gold so I can start building equipment for Alchemy and Bio magic.
Once my head cleared, I checked on the shaped stone mana batteries, which were still holding their charge. A quick look at the new metal list on the page showed a significant change in the metal composition, namely a lot more aluminium, but still not enough gold to be measured.
The rest of the day I spent in Aura meditation trying to sooth the damage I did channelling to much mana.
…..
The last of the light was retreating up the mountain sides, as I sat eating bits from the goose roasting over a fire. The green tarp was set up on the edge of a small lake situated in a steep valley. It was fed from several small creeks that spilled down the side of the valley in a series of small waterfalls. At the head of the valley a small river had created a large gravel field covered in small trees and bushes. The lake appeared to drop off very quickly from the shore and hosted a variety of fish and game. Small drifts of snow, hidden by shadows, still survived under trees, or in the folds of the valley walls.
I savored the greasy campfire roasted meat, as I grinned at my latest Detect Metal list.
VOL 1570
Al 109
Fe 109
Cu 15.0
Zn .961
Ni .213
Au .003
Ag .011
The modified spell, now a cone with a 10-meter radius and a 20-meter range, covers a much narrower volume with a lower mental strain. The green rock I had found earlier made for adequate mana batteries, supplementing what I could currently channel. The last reading was taken at the head of the valley, indicating a higher-than-normal reading of copper, zinc, and gold.
I had been hiking around for over a month, this being the third water way I had on my prospecting list. The river below this lake had been a bust.
-Maybe the lake is holding all the placer gold from the source up higher.
I sipped week tea from a stone cup I shaped earlier, contemplating my plans.
-I was giving up hope of finding an area with enough gold to make the effort to extract it worth more than just a few flakes.
I cut a new slice off the fat glistening goose as I planned the next day.
Once I located a good target area, I had several ways to remove the gold depending on its location. If it was placer gold in a river or creek, Water Shaping could be used to loosen up the gravel, while Earth magic could be used to sort the gold up to the surface. Either a sluice box or just panning could collect it from there. If I actually did find a vein in rock face of the valley, a combination of Heat magic to soften it up, and Earth magic to pull it out. I would have to be careful not to leave any trace marks above what could be explained away with simple sniping tools.
The first half of the next day was spent on a Detect Metal survey of the feeding streams, two on the north side running down a sloped rock face registered for gold. By the time they were done, my head was starting to ache, so I put that aside and went fishing for lunch and dinner. A small amount of Elemental Light magic on a lure made sure to catch my foods attention. That night I slowly worked on the ground around the camp, making sure the drainage was good and the ground was hard. I would rather not be walking around in mud when it rained later.
The next morning, I surveyed the last of the feeding streams, duds. I moved on, up to the head water river and took several more readings along its length. The small spring swollen river continued to return between .003 and .002. Not worth the attention of a large mining company, but defiantly worth my attention.
That afternoon, after I had returned, I finished the camp and went looking for suitable dead fall to make lumber from the forest surrounds.
I hated working magic on wood. Dead wood was made of dense fibers, which had to be cut if you wanted to shape it. Stone, metal, gems etc. all had crystalline structures that could be exploited, splinting along the materials structure could be easily controlled and required less mana. Heat magic could also be used, making metal and crystalline material malleable. More mana costly, but with tricks, could be managed. Using the existing characteristics of metals and other crystalline structure materials I classified micro scale manipulating effects. Wood on the other had could only be shaped with Macro scale effects. Water jets, abrasive sand/wind blades, metal blades, etc. The main tool I had developed, and most frequently used, was high frequency vibrating blades, but they had their own problems, namely durability. Most naturally occurring materials either melted, disintegrated or blew apart at the required vibrating speeds. Currently I was going to have to use another method, one that I didn’t like. Using Elemental magic, I could build, reinforce, and rotate at speed what amounted to molecular saw. It required a low enough amount of mana, scaling with the size of the saw blade, that I could handle it with my extra mana batteries. The problem came with the level of attention and concentration the spell required. Watching a molecular blade slice off your leg because you went to slap a mosquito had a lasting mental trauma effect.
I found a tree that had fallen from a winter storm, and carefully removed the limbs from the trunk. Next was slicing it into 4-meter lengths. By then I had reached my mental limit, so I dragged the larger limbs back to camp. The aura circulation while I worked had just added an extra layer of fun pain to my day.
Morning sent me back out to the logs, to slice the first 4-meter length into planks. Using a line of magic ice as a guide, I sliced the log into wide planks. Sweat had soaked my t-shirt by the time I had dragged the first set of planks to the base of the north streams.
On the way back I used Elemental Ice magic, forming a supper thin blade of high-density ice to behead a duck on the lake. Water shaping brought the body to the shore and made sure the blood drained completely.
All the good elemental magic wielders that had meet through my lives, had all spent inordinate amounts of time trying to comprehend more about the elements they wielded. The best reminded me of nothing more than university professors preforming scientific experiments, collecting data, and formulating their next theory to test. Ice magic is a good example of this.
In one of my earliest lives, I had found myself awakening in small town deep in one of the northern continental ranges. While the outside world was still turbulent from the aftereffects of the Deamon invasion, this small kingdom of mountain villages and towns remained relatively stable. I spent several years as a lumber jack, the job my body apparently had before I had lost my ‘memories’ in an avalanche. During that time, I had gained a reputation as a problem solver, which mostly consisted of applying modern mechanical knowledge. I built pullies, levers, pumps, bearings, drills, springs, conveyor belts, log sluices and eventually a water powered sawmill. By the end of my first decade, I had become more like an industrial architect/contractor.
Astralis Cetrial Tomalion was a wealthy high noble from ‘the outside’. He moved into a small farm estate located in a deep valley on the northern edges of the mountain kingdom. Master Tomalion was an accomplished magician of an elemental based school of magic, having traveled here to continue his work with his specialty. Ice magic.
My first job for Master Tomalion was building a giant icehouse beside the lake on his property. I had originally been contracted because of the sheer size of the icehouse he wanted, but I ended up staying longer than the original contract. We figured out how to get the massive blocks of ice he wanted out of the lake during the winter then went on to designing and setting up a core drilling rig on a local glacier. Later, it was while building a system to put ice cylinders under massive pressure, that I got to know him on a more personal level. I grew to like the somewhat arrogant, but always inquisitive mage. Over the 30 years that he lived in the small kingdom, ¾ of my time was spent working with Master Tomalion. Together we learned an amazing amount about the nature and properties of ice.
One of the first things than he had taught me was that there are many forms of Ice, from a soft white, stiff but malleable like ice cream, to a glassy quartz like ice that went from solid to gas almost instantly if touched or disturbed. Tomalion had classified 15 types of ice, although he was the first to admit that a lot were academic differences with little application outside of research purposes.
Master Tomalion’s greatest achievement was the creation and mastery of a high-density stable ice, which he named Lapis. The deep blue ice required precise control of pressure, temperature, and the vibration of water to form, as well as multi-step process through two other types of ice. The result was an incredibly strong ice with a low concentration and mana maintenance cost. The steel hard ice would naturally form razor sharp sheets, making it a perfect material for offensive spells.
I still use Lapis for forming ice blades with my Elemental magic.
Master Tomalion and I parted ways when he returned to his homeland. Later I read that he went on to end the civil war ravaging his home, removing the corrupt royal family, and establishing a dynasty the lasted for half millennium. At the time I remember wondering if my old friend had gotten anytime to continue his research.
That night I ate the spit roasted duck thinking about my long past friend.
…..
Standing next to the rough sluice box, I reached into the water rushing over the ridges across the bottom of the box to wash the dirt from my fingers. It was the second day the I had been using Elemental magic to sort the placer gold buried in the gravel brought down form the rock above over the years. Because of the limit on both how much mana my body could channel, and the control my current brain could handle, I had to work over longer periods of time.
Taking a break, I looked over the rain pebbled surface of the lake.
“Even the ducks are hiding today.”-Me
I looked at the gravel that fanned out from the streams mouth into the lake, watching silt and air bubbles floating up from where I had been disturbing the gravel bed with magic.
-A few more days of work and I'll start shovelling the soon to be gold rich surface gravel into the sluice. With a bit of elemental magic to help out, I should soon have enough gold to head back and have it assayed. One claim later and I'll come back out and really start pulling out the rest.
I had estimated that I would be able to pull about 150 troy ounces from the gravel. When sold to the refiner at about 70% of market price, will turn out to be just under $200,000. After tax, somewhere close to $130,000.
I smiled and returned to slowly sorting the placer gold up through the gravel bed.
Hopefully everything goes well with the gold.
Thank you for the chapter!